In an optical amplifier or an optical fiber laser, an optical output power therefrom may be lowered because of failure or deterioration of pumping light sources provided within such a device or for some other reasons. Several methods have heretofore been proposed to detect such a decrease of an optical output power (see, e.g., Patent Literatures 1-3).
Patent Literature 1 discloses a method of determining deterioration of a pumping light source from a difference between an optical output from the pumping light source and a reference optical pumping output that has been stored in advance. This method includes calculating an output difference between an optical signal output calculated from an optical output of an optical amplifier and a predetermined set point of the optical output. A driving current of the pumping light source is increased according to the output difference such that the optical output of the optical amplifier is equal to the set point of the optical output. With the method disclosed in Patent Literature 1, however, the set point of the optical output is fixed. Therefore, this method cannot be applied to operations (such as an optical fiber laser) in which an optical output is not fixed (in a case where the intensity of the optical output is modulated).
Furthermore, Patent Literature 2 discloses a method of determining that an optical amplifier is deteriorated when a change of the power of output light from the optical amplifier relative to a change of the power of pumping light is equal to or less than a predetermined lifetime reference value. However, this method determines deterioration of the optical amplifier based on a change of the power of the pumping light and a change of the power of the output light. Therefore, deterioration of the optical amplifier cannot be determined during a continuous-wave oscillation (CW) operation, during which the power of the output light is controlled to be constant.
Moreover, Patent Literature 3 discloses a method of detecting a laser beam leaking out of a fused portion, where failure is likely to occur, with imaging means upon occurrence of a failure. According to this method, however, portions where failure or deterioration is likely to occur should be predetermined as targets to be monitored when the imaging means are located. If a large number of such portions exist, a plurality of imaging means are required. Furthermore, this method can only detect failure or deterioration at specific portions corresponding to the imaging means. Additionally, a space is required to dispose the imaging means around the optical fiber laser body. Therefore, this method is disadvantageous to high-density packaging.